


Tourniquet

by cherryandmapletrees



Series: Fallen Through The Open Door [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Cutting, Dark, Descriptive images of scarring, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Mental Health Issues, NOT BUGHEAD CENTRIC, Self-Harm, canon self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 18:31:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16101347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryandmapletrees/pseuds/cherryandmapletrees
Summary: Hell (noun): a state or place of great suffering; an unbearable experience.Elizabeth Cooper was in hell. Granted, it was a self established hell, but a hell nonetheless.





	Tourniquet

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: This is a very dark fic that deals with self harm, cutting, descriptions of scarring, and emotional and psychological abuse. This fic IS NOT Bughead centric, but it does hint towards it at the very end. This is based off of one of my favorite songs by my very favorite band, Tourniquet by Evanescence. Some lines from the song are sprinkled throughout the fic, italicized and grouped together. This is a fic I felt called to write, and I wouldn't have finished it without Cyd (Ao3: squids, Tumblr: shrugheadjonesthethird) and Cass (Ao3: nationalrebellion, Tumblr: sweetpea-cc), two lovely humans who helped me beta and run through ideas (Cyd also made the graphic and she's a queen when it comes to paragraph breaks) Hope you enjoy and please feel free to leave a comment.

_I tried to kill the pain but only brought more, so much more._

 

Betty Cooper had an addiction.

 

Not to alcohol, not to drugs, nothing like that. No, just an addiction to pain. It started as her nails digging into her palms whenever her mother started in with the cruel taunts and thinly veiled statements. Her mother had been taunting her about her weight, saying the same old statements she always said, and Betty had curled her hands into fists in an attempt to calm herself down. Her fingernails had always been sort of long ( _A woman’s fingernails are her pride, Elizabeth. Your hands make an impression of you, it should be a good one._ ) and they’d dug into her palms, the sharp bite of the pain distracting her from the blood rushing in her ears and the tears threatening to spill over.

 

The endorphins that flooded through her as soon as she relaxed her hands had further drawn her in, a shiver slipping down her spine as the heady feeling rushed through her.

 

From that moment forward, she searched for pain as a distraction from the emotional hell she lived in. Pain was something she could fall back on, something to help her keep her head up and a smile plastered on her face. No one seemed to notice how often her hands curled in, knuckles turning white as bone as her nails dug into the soft flesh of her palms.

 

The skin almost never split, but deep red half-moons would appear on her palms a little later, a silent reminder. She learned to keep her palms facing her, hiding the marks, and eventually they began to turn to scars. Two years passed, and that was enough for her to keep her from breaking into pieces.

 

\--

 

Betty sighed slightly as she plunged her hands back into the sink full of hot water, hissing slightly as it stung her palms. They were raw and angry, having just been through yet another fight with her mother, this time over the way she’d put the plates in the dishwasher. It had ended with Alice lowering her voice to an ice cold tone and simply stating “If you keep up like this, you’ll never amount to anything” before storming upstairs and leaving Betty to clean up the dishes from the dinner she hadn’t even eaten.

 

Fighting back the tears that threatened to spill over, she drew in a shaky breath and grabbed the knife that rested at the bottom of the sink, running the dishcloth over the sharp edge of the blade, careful to avoid her fingers. It was when she was rinsing it that the blade slipped and slid over her finger, barely slicing it open, but enough so that she felt the flood of adrenaline rush through her. Air slipped from her lungs in a harsh sigh as she shook the blood from her finger and stared, mesmerized, at the knife in her hand.

 

Almost in a daze, she lowered the knife back into the water, cleaning the blood from it before rinsing it again, careful to avoid her fingers this time. Every time she lowered her hand back into the water, the cut on her finger stung; she felt an odd sense of peace as it cleared her head, taking the tangled strings of thoughts and anguish and slicing through them, silencing them, quieting her mind. She finished with the dishes, drying them and putting them away carefully, slowly enough that the pans barely made a sound as they settled in the cupboard.

 

She stole quietly upstairs, feet barely touching the steps. She’d learned how to swing her squeaky bedroom door shut fast enough that it wouldn’t make a sound, and she did that now, breath held as she tried not to anger Alice any further. She laid on her bed flat on her back, tears slipping down her cheeks as she struggled to hold her breath to silence the strangled sobs working their way up her throat.

 

She rolled over and opened the drawer of her bedside table, pulling out one of the pocketknives Hal had bought her “for safety purposes” and flicking it open. Dragging in a deep breath, she pressed the blade to the side of her calf and dragged it across her skin, gritting her teeth against the sharp bite of pain.

 

For years after that, she looked back at that moment. The moment she finally let go and descended into the hell of addiction, and she hated herself for it, but she didn’t regret it. It had been the only thing that would help her keep her head above water, from drowning in the pain and turmoil that threatened to crush her, break her, destroy her.

 

_I’m pouring crimson regret and betrayal_

_I’m dying, praying, bleeding, and screaming_

_Am I too lost to be saved?_

_Am I too lost?_

 

\--

 

Six weeks after she started carving into her skin with a pocketknife, never able to actually draw blood,  she found herself standing in the bathroom, holding a razor in her hands with her thumb rubbing along the plastic surface that was there to protect her fragile skin from the unyielding blades housed in the flimsy plastic. She found out exactly how flimsy when she snapped the head off of the razor, the handle dropping to the ground.

 

She slid off the clear plastic guard, careful as she gripped the head of the razor in her fingers. She pulled the knife out of her pocket and flicked it open, using it to carve off the pieces holding the blades in until they fell out, five shining blades laid out in a line on the bathroom counter.

 

She almost laughed at how absurdly easy it had been for her to turn this tool that was supposed to be used to beautify yourself ( _No one likes a woman with hair on her legs, Elizabeth. Take care of it, you look like a mess._ ) into a tool for destruction and pain. She grabbed the piece of paper she’d ripped out of her school notebook and folded it carefully, edges even and straight, three times until she held a small rectangle in her hands. She made sure to crease the edges so they’d stay put, and then unfolded the paper, setting it on the counter.

 

Four of the five blades she laid carefully on the paper, right on the middle crease. The fifth she lifted to her left wrist, an audible sigh forcing itself from her lungs as it sliced into the fragile skin, the deep red of her blood welling up immediately. She couldn’t help but think it looked beautiful, welling up in drops that slowly slid down the sides of her wrist as she stared, the blade still held loosely in her right hand. Her mother calling her name had a sharp curse falling from her lips as she dropped the blade onto the paper, folding it shut around the shining silver. She started to put it in her pocket but froze.

 

Alice was notorious for randomly checking Betty’s pockets, and in a moment of panic, she put it the only place she knew her mother would never look; her bra. She grabbed the ace bandage that sat on the counter, normally used to wrap her ankle that she’d recently twisted, and rapidly coiled it around her wrist before pulling down her sleeve, effectively hiding what she’d done.

 

She kept her left arm pressed against her side as she spoke to her mother, a perfectly trivial conversation. Alice was asking her if she remembered where the recipe for the “green” smoothies they’d been drinking lately ( _You’re gaining weight, Elizabeth. Try a diet, it’ll do you good. You’ll never find a husband looking like that_ ) had gone, all while Betty could feel the quiet pulse of her veins and the gentle sting of the cut on her wrist.

 

She helped her mother find the recipe before going back upstairs to her room and carefully unwrapping the bandage, the smear of blood across her wrist a soothing sight, calming her mind.

 

It became a pattern for her when the thoughts and emotions got so strong, so tangled they felt like they’d choke her, strangle her until she couldn’t breathe. She took comfort in the sting of a blade, the warmth of her blood pooling on her skin, and the cool of it as it dripped down into the bathtub where she perched on the edge. Given her penchant for rolling her sleeves to her elbows, she opted for her thighs as the area on which to carve out her destruction, straight line after straight line.

 

It was almost pretty, the symmetry with which she destroyed herself. Perfectly straight lines forming a pattern on her skin; beginning with an angry pink after the first shower (she always cut right before a shower, easier to clean them, less of a mess) to the deep, ruby red of the scabs to the dark edges that still had the baby pink in the center as they healed before they settled into the smooth, glossy mauve of scars.

 

Something this destructive shouldn’t be able to be this beautiful, and yet it was.

 

She learned to endure the pain of her jeans rubbing against the fresh wounds without flinching ( _It doesn’t hurt that bad, Elizabeth, you know how low of a pain tolerance you have. Push through, you know Cooper women don’t admit weakness_ ) and she learned to smile when she felt like she was dying inside.

 

If there was ever a word people used to describe Betty Cooper, it was _perfect_.

 

The perfect daughter -- who did as she was asked with no resistance and no hesitation. The perfect student -- homework assignments turned in exactly on time if not early, extracurricular activities, editor of the newspaper. The perfect sister -- always willing to give Polly a hand when she needed it. The perfect friend, always there for a shoulder to cry on when needed, or a tutoring session, or even help with household chores. The perfect neighbor -- quiet and unobtrusive, but helpful and gentle.

 

Perfect, perfect, _perfect_. Always perfect.

 

So it made sense, of course, it did, that her self-destruction was “perfect” too, in the sense that the ruby red lines in her skin were straight, and they were always kept clean and disinfected. For once in her life, she just wanted someone she didn’t have to play the part of perfect around.

 

She found that person was none other that Forsythe Pendleton Jones, the Third, a Southside Serpent of all people.

 

\--

_My wounds cry for the grave_

_My soul cries for deliverance_

_Will I be denied_

 

She met him on a Tuesday, a relatively normal day, but vastly different in two ways. First, Southside High had shut down, forcing the students who went there to transfer to Riverdale High. It caused a huge stir among parents, especially Alice, who had told Betty to stay away from the Southside Serpents.

 

Second, it was the day she met the boy who called himself Jughead, the boy who looked into her eyes and was the first to ever see the pain and darkness inside of them, to recognize it for what it was, and not turn away from her.

 

His eyes, a shocking blue, held hers from across the room, curiosity, and understanding shining through. Once the hustle of getting the students off to class subsided, he walked up to her, his movements slow, measured, and confident. His lips curved in a half smile as he took her hand in his. For the first time, she didn’t feel the need to pull away, to pull her arms close to her and hide the few scars on her wrists and the more abundant ones on the palms of her hands.

 

His thumb ran gently along the crescent moon scars on her palms, the sleeve of his leather jacket shifting just enough that she could see the ghostly white of scars on his arms. With that simple touch and shift of a sleeve, she realized that maybe there could be beauty found in pain, that there was a light at the end of the destruction.

  


For the first time, in as long as she could remember, Elizabeth Diana Cooper didn’t feel alone. Maybe there was something more to life than the pain. And maybe, just maybe she’d found a friend to share it with, someone who understood why she did what she did to cope. Someone who just might be the help she needed to crawl out of the hell she’d created for herself. Her salvation, her tourniquet.

**Author's Note:**

> A note on Betty's middle name. She does not have one in either Riverdale canon or Archie Comic canon, so I opted to give her one. The name Diana means heavenly or divine, and it is the name of the Goddess Artemis in Roman Mythology. It seemed to fit Betty for this fic, so I gave it to her. And it reminded me of Diana Prince, who as we all know is a badass <3 (it it puts her name in reverse alphabetical order: EDC, which seems a very Alice thing to do. I hope you enjoyed reading <3


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